


Prowl and Lurk

by chlodobird



Series: The Dragon of Hell's Kitchen [8]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Aaron Davis Lives, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Light Angst, Miles Morales Needs a Hug, Team Dynamics, bc his uncle is a criminal and he's a hero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23517859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlodobird/pseuds/chlodobird
Summary: Three times Peter sees the Prowler, two times Miles runs into the Prowler, and one time Miles talks to Uncle Aaron.
Relationships: Aaron Davis & Miles Morales, Matt Murdock & Peter Parker & Miles Morales
Series: The Dragon of Hell's Kitchen [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660564
Comments: 9
Kudos: 244





	Prowl and Lurk

The first time Peter sees the Prowler is in January of 2017, when he meets Matt. He’s fighting the Vulture, who calls for backup, and his heart sinks. He keeps up his banter, but _seriously_? It’s hard enough fighting the Vulture on his own. A two on one fight would probably give him a few broken ribs, and a stab wound or three to boot.

Peter doesn’t let himself think about worse endings.

He throws himself into the fight with renewed vigor, but he’s losing. Can’t catch his breath. That’s when Daredevil steps in. He takes on the Prowler, and Peter can’t focus on the nearby fight- Vulture is pressing forward, and he has to pay attention to what he’s doing before he gets skewered by a wingtip. The sounds of two silent men fighting over in a different part of the warehouse stop abruptly, and the lights go out.

Daredevil throws something (his sticks? Peter thinks he remembers seeing those in the news), finishing the fight easily in the pitch dark. Peter webs up the criminals and leaves with Daredevil to go fix his wounds, too excited about a new ally to remember to check who the Prowler is.

He finds out later on the news that Prowler escaped before the police arrived, and Peter feels a twinge of guilt.

The second time Peter sees the Prowler is a month later. He’s with Matt, and is so much more confident with a bit of training and a vigilante behind him.

“Hey!” he calls. “You escaped last time!”

Prowler just snarls and uses his boots to speed forward. Peter and Matt tense, ready for a fight, but he just blows past them. Too late, Peter notices the papers in Prowler’s claws.

“Those don’t belong to you!” he yells as he gives chase. He doesn’t even realize he’s left Matt in the dust until he tackles the Prowler and gets thrown against a wall.

He leaps to his feet immediately, but the Prowler had used the moment he was distracted to vanish, and Peter curses at his absence. The next day, he asks Ned to break into the police database (he’d ripped most of the tech out of his after rejecting Stark and the Avengers) and together, they realize that even though Spider-Man is great at stopping street crime, and is learning how to take down mobs and smuggling rings, heists and burglaries usually don’t have enough conflict to grab his notice until the criminal is trying to get away. The best criminals, the ones like Prowler, never make it onto his radar at all.

Together, they realize that the Prowler’s been stealing stuff for ages, and Peter just happened to bump into him that night. It leaves a bitter taste in Peter’s mouth until Ned offhandedly comments on how the corporation Prowler stole from underpays its employees and sources its raw materials unsustainably.

Right then and there, Peter decides that Matt has the right idea, and keeps his attention on the criminals that hurt people who aren’t protected by the system. He would much rather stop a violent mugging than a random theft. The Prowler stays at the back of his mind, but it’s in the corner where Peter shoves the shit he doesn’t think about, with the Avengers offers and the panic that rises every time he’s in a small, dark space. Peter focuses on the stuff he can actually do something about, instead of what’s out of his control.

The third time Peter sees the Prowler is in January of 2018. He’s swinging aimlessly through Manhattan on a quiet winter night, and catches sight of the costumed supervillain out of the corner of his eye.

“Prowler! Stop right there!”

Of course, he ignores Peter’s shout, and vanishes between buildings. Peter takes off after him like a shot, and loses sight of him almost instantly. He searches high and low for fifteen minutes before he hears the sounds of a mugging drifting up out of a nearby alley. He resigns himself to another loss in his encounters with Prowler, and dashes off to save someone.

When he’s comforting the victim after the attack, he thinks to himself that he made the right call.

The first time Miles runs into the Prowler, it’s a bright cold day in February, and the criminal is disappearing over the horizon. Miles immediately forgets about meeting up with his friends for patrol, and chases after Prowler. He loses him somewhere in the Upper West Side, and groans. He readjusts his course to head to Hell’s Kitchen, and gets there fifteen minutes late.

During patrol, he mentions his sighting of the infamous thief, and Matt and Peter look angry and worried, respectively. Peter talks about how the Prowler had gotten more violent recently, had started leaving injured guards and bystanders in his wake. Matt mentions his suspicions that Vanessa Fisk has recruited the masked marauder, and Miles stares at the ground.

“Sorry I couldn’t catch him,” he mumbles.

Peter lays a reassuring hand on Miles’ shoulder, and says, “Miles, I couldn’t catch him either. This guy’s fast and smart, and you’re doing so great, don’t worry.”

Miles perks up at the praise, and silently promises himself that he’ll get the Prowler next time.

The second time Miles runs into the Prowler is four months into his training, in May, 2018. The criminal doesn’t pull any punches, but Miles is fast. He’s with both Peter and Matt, and even though the Prowler isn’t hesitating to use deadly force, his attention is split. Between the three of them, they take the Prowler down without too much trouble. It’s when they take the mask off the criminal webbed to the wall that Miles freezes.

It’s Uncle Aaron.

Matt moves towards him, and asks, “Are you okay?”, but Miles can barely hear him over the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

Uncle Aaron is the Prowler.

His uncle was just trying to _kill him._

Every news report, every discussion of threats still at large flashes through Miles’ mind. From there, before he can even blink, his mind goes back through his conversations with Aaron. He combs through the interactions he had with his uncle, and everything else he knows about him. The time Aaron was shot, was that because he was a criminal? Does Miles’ dad know? Is that why they don’t talk anymore?

When Miles first met Peter, they’d talked about Uncle Aaron maybe being a criminal, but Miles hadn’t imagined anything like this. He hadn’t even wanted to face the possibility, so he just ignored it, hadn’t thought about it in months. Wait.

Aaron was the one who brought the Oscorp spider with him. Was it on purpose? An accident? Does he know Miles is Spider-Man?

Miles’ breathing is fast and he can feel himself flickering in and out of visibility. Matt (warm, steady Matt) places his hands on Miles’ shoulders and says, kind but firm, “Breathe. We’ll get through this. In for three seconds, out for three seconds.”

Miles obeys without thinking about it, and manages to get control again. He still can’t look at his uncle. He locks eyes with Peter instead, and says to the two vigilantes, “He’s- he’s Aaron Davis.”

Both of his friends make the connection between Aaron Davis and Miles’ Uncle Aaron immediately. Peter softly asks, “What do you need us to do?”

Miles hesitates, and replies quietly enough that his uncle can’t hear him. “Um, just stay here while I talk to him.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before he steps forward and looks up into the angry, determined eyes of Uncle Aaron. Miles takes a deep breath, and pulls his mask off. 

Aaron’s eyes widen, and the guilt and shock are clear on his face. He didn’t know that Miles is Spider-Man, and Miles feels some of his anxiety ease. At least he didn’t know. After barely a second, Aaron’s expression shifts, and the man closes himself off. Miles can’t read him, but he’s seen enough.

Neither say a word.

Even though it feels like an eternity, it only takes about ten seconds for Miles to decide what to do. He reaches out and tears the webs off of Aaron. 

“Leave whatever it was you stole and get out of here.”

His uncle hesitates, but the sound of police sirens spurs him onto the roofs. They leave the jewels for the police, and vanish into the night.

Matt waits until they’re a couple roofs away before asking, “Do you want to talk about it, be distracted, or for no one to say anything?”

He doesn’t know how to respond. “I don’t- um-” He couldn’t breathe. Uncle Aaron tried to kill him. Uncle Aaron. Uncle Aaron! It couldn’t be, it-

“Miles, have you had a panic attack before?” Matt says calmly.

Is that what this was? “I guess?”

“We’re here for you, Miles. What do you need us to do?” Peter added.

Miles shakes his head. “I don’t know, I don’t- um.”

Matt’s voice is soft as he tells Miles, “Breathe with me, okay? In . . . out.”

He follows the directions, and Matt keeps going. They breathe together for a couple minutes, and Matt and Peter keep reassuring him he is going to be okay.

After ten minutes, he manages to say, “I’m sorry.”

“Miles, you have nothing to apologize for,” Matt reassures him. “You can’t control what your uncle does.”

“No, for, um. For freaking out about it.”

“It was a panic attack,” Matt says quietly. “It’s not your fault. These things happen sometimes.”

Peter nods. “I get them, every once in a while. No one can control stuff like this, Miles, it’s not your fault.”

“Thanks,” he says. He closes his eyes for a second, and almost keeps them closed. “I think I’m going to go back to my dorm and get some sleep.”

Matt nods. “Do you want a ride there?”

He feels weighed down, exhausted. “Yes please.”

Matt shifts into a dragon and scoops Miles into his claws gently before he can scramble onto his back. Peter leaps on, and they’re at Visions within minutes.

He hands Miles off to Peter, who easily carries him down the side of the building with his super strength and wall crawling. Matt must follow them, because when Miles is in his bed, they’re both there.

“Miles, we’ll be here for you tomorrow. Get some rest,” one of them gently tells him.

He’s asleep before he can reply.

The third time Miles runs into the Prowler The next time Miles talks to Aaron Davis is three days later.

He knocks on Aaron’s window and crawls into the room without waiting for a reply. “Uncle Aaron? You there?”

“I am.”

Miles takes a deep breath and looks his uncle in the eye. “You tried to kill me.”

“I didn’t know it was you, Miles, I’m so sorry.”

“But you knew it was someone. You’ve killed other people, haven’t you?”

Aaron looks away. “Yeah.”

“Man, you were supposed to be a good guy! I trusted you!”

“I know, I’m sorry. I screwed up.”

“I want to know why you do this stuff,” Miles asks.

And Aaron tells him.

He tells Miles how he started out just tagging walls with Jeff, how they started stealing the paint cans they used, how they started stealing more shit. Miles listens as he describes Jeff finishing senior year with less and less frequent jobs, and at graduation, told Aaron that he was going to the police academy.

“I quit for a while, followed Jeff’s example. But I got pulled back in.”

He takes a moment to collect his thoughts, and Miles waits patiently. He has all night. Aaron dives back into the story and explains how he was contacted by bigger and bigger villains. He created the Prowler. He backed up the Vulture and fought Miles’ teammates. Later, Vanessa Fisk recruited him for a job and Aaron started working for him.

Aaron trails off anticlimactically, and Miles tilts his head to judge his sincerity.

His uncle starts to say, “Look, I understand if you have to-” but gets cut off by Miles.

“Are you planning to stay a criminal?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly.

Miles tilts his head. “I talked to my teammates. One of them said that you could kind of- not work _with_ us, but alongside us. Help us put away assholes that hurt people, but we turn a blind eye if you decide to steal from a corporation that is a jerk to its employees.”

Aaron looks up, finally meeting Miles’ eyes. “That might work,” he says slowly. “We could stage fights every so often, keep the damage down but make sure we both look legit.”

“We’d have to figure out details, and Daredevil can help with that, but,” Miles says, “this could work.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“There’s still a lot we have to talk about,” he cautions Uncle Aaron.

“I know, I know. But I’m not in jail, so that’s a start,” he says, aiming for somewhere close to his usual calm (unfortunately, not doing a very good job of it).

“Um, does- do my parents know you’re the Prowler?”

Aaron sighs. “No. Jeff and I stopped talking long before I started wearing a mask. Do they know about your crime-fighting?”

He shakes his head, and they’re both quiet for a moment.

“I’m, uh. I’m gonna go,” Miles tells him with a shrug. “I’ve got to get an essay done.”

“Alright, man, good luck. And thank you.”

Miles doesn’t smile, but when he looks back at his uncle before leaving, he lets the optimism show on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> I think that it's interesting to play with a Miles that doesn't have a dead Uncle Aaron. If Aaron is alive, then Miles can actually resolve the issues he would have with his uncle being a lowkey murderer instead of sweeping it under the rug to focus on Aaron's death and all the issues surrounding that.


End file.
